Today’s post, in which I offer a qualified endorsement of the new draft bike plan

Wednesday’s humidity, which followed the scorching heat of the first few days of the week, may have discouraged people from attending the West L.A. hearing on the latest draft of the proposed new bike plan.

Then again, it might have been the unexpected rain that evening, since many Angelenos have a well-founded fear of melting if they get wet.

Or it could have been the gridlocked rush hour traffic, so bad it took over 40 minutes just to drive a few miles down Santa Monica Blvd to where the meeting was being held. And demonstrating better than anything else just why we need an effective plan that provides a viable alternative to driving.

Yes, I recognize the irony of driving to a meeting to create a plan that will encourage other people not to.

And yes, I could have gotten there much faster by bike.

So it’s possible that some people had already come and gone before I finally got there. Or maybe it’s just a sign of bike plan fatigue after nearly two full years of feeling like we’ve had to fight the city for a more effective roadmap to biking infrastructure.

Even if it is starting to look like we may finally be on the same side, after all.

But as Damien Newton points out on Streetsblog, only a handful of people attended the meeting. And only 6 spoke to offer their comments — and no, I wasn’t one of them.

For a change, I wanted to listen.

One of the things I heard was that many people feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of the plan. Which is actually a good thing, since the previous draft was sparse enough that it was relatively easy to pick it apart and expose the flaws.

But while some people complained about various details, most seemed to find things they liked about it, tracing lines on the various maps with their fingers to identify routes that actually led where they wanted to go.

I did the same thing myself, discovering routes in the plan that would allow me to ride various bikeways from the Westside to Downtown, which was my primary complaint about the previous draft.

Joe was also quick to direct my attention to the draft plan’s call for minimum 11’ vehicle lanes, noting that the current L.A. standard is 10’ and some other cities stripe lanes as narrow as 9 feet. Which could cause some proposed bike lanes to slip into the much despised and thankfully discontinued “currently infeasible” category, as the extra foot per lane crowds out space for bike lanes.

Not to mention that studies have shown narrower lanes slow speeding traffic and cause drivers to operate their vehicles more carefully. Always a good thing, unless all you care about is how many vehicles you can move through the city’s streets every hour.

But that was the old LADOT, right?

Meanwhile, Josef Bray-Ali says more could be done to allow building owners to substitute bike parking for car parking, and to remove lanes to make way for bikes.

Personally, I’d like to see a provision for regular maintenance of all city bikeways, along with a requirement that LADOT staffers ride every inch of bikeway in the city on regular basis — or at least encourage and respond to reports from riders — to ensure that they’re actually in safe, ridable condition. Unlike some UCLA adjacent bikeways I could name.

Along with a cycling equivalent of the Mayor’s 30/10 plan that would build out the bike plan while those of us who’ve fought for bikeways on our streets are still young enough to ride them.

I like a lot of what I see in the draft plan, though. Like the idea of Bike Friendly Streets, and a Neighborhood Bikeway Network that would allow riders to travel within their own local community or feed into the 660 miles of the Citywide Bikeway Network. As well as the fact that the city listened to cyclists and incorporated the Backbone Bikeway Network into the plan as the basis of the CBN.

But the devil, as always, is in the details.

Take Wilshire Blvd, for instance — currently a car-choked thoroughfare operating at or near capacity for much of the day, and one of the city’s most uninviting streets for bicyclists. And just one of the major boulevards that make up the Citywide Network.

So are they actually planning to put bike lanes Wilshire Blvd, which would necessitate the removal of one or more traffic or parking lanes — and could invite open rebellion from the driving public? Or are they simply planning to put up signs designating it as yet another meaningless bike route, leaving us to fight for our survival like Snake Plissken attempting to make his escape from the mean streets of L.A?

A lot depends on who our new BFF selects to replace Rita Robinson as the new General Manager of LADOT. While there have been signs of a culture change at the department in recent months, the person Mayor Villaraigosa hires will go a long way towards determining just how this plan gets implemented and what our streets will look like in another 10 years.

He can — and should — cement his new-found support for cycling by selecting someone who will truly reform the department, and implement genuine Complete Streets policies that will benefit everyone on or along the avenues of L.A.

Or he can appoint someone who will continue the same failed focus on automotive throughput that has ruined our neighborhoods, and puts the safety of every Angeleno at risk whenever we walk, ride or drive on city streets.

A year ago, I would have bet my life savings on the latter. Not that $2.37 would have got me very good odds on a sure thing.

Today, though, it’s a different question.

The mayor’s recent actions seem to show that he gets it now. And raises hopes that he’ll make a bold choice to lead the department and make a lasting mark on the city before he leaves office.

In addition, we seem to have a genuine champion in TranspoComm chair Bill Rosendahl, as his remarks at Wednesday’s hearing show. And I haven’t forgotten Council President Eric Garcetti’s words of support, including a promise to stay on top of the proposed anti-harassment ordinance that should come up for a hearing in the Transportation Committee later this month.

In other words, the pieces finally appear to be in place to transform, not just the streets of L.A., but the safety and livability of the entire city. This bike plan could and should be the catalyst to accomplish that.

So I’ll repeat the offer I made last year, with a little more hope and enthusiasm this time.

If the Mayor and council members will commit to support the new bike plan — and more importantly, fund and implement it — I’ll support it, as well.

Finally, LAB ranked Eddie Merckx as the greatest cyclist of all time, followed by Lance, Major Taylor, Fausto Coppi and Jeannie Longo; needless to say, the vote was held before Longo finished 5th in the women’s world time trial championship at age 51.

Oddly, I somehow failed to make the list.

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I will say that having a mayor who is really behind biking can make a real difference. It’s happening slowly here in Boston, but Hizzoner (AKA mayor for life Menino) started biking as his daily exercise a couple of years ago, then hired Nichole Freedman as his bike czar, and has really supported her and pushed a lot of city departments to start taking biking seriously. It doesn’t change overnight, and our biggest problem is the incredibly tight built environment, but there are very hopeful signs in all the city departments.

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